Broken discrete and continuous symmetries in two-dimensional spiral antiferromagnets

We study the occurrence of symmetry breaking, at zero and finite temperatures, in the J1-J3 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the square lattice using Schwinger boson mean field theory. For spin-1/2 the ground state always breaks the SU(2) symmetry with a continuous quasi-critical transition at J3/J1 ∼ 0.38, from Néel to spiral long range order, although local spin fluctuation considerations suggest an intermediate disordered regime around 0.35 ≲ J3/J1 ≲ 0.5, in qualitative agreement with recent numerical results. At low temperatures we find a Z2 broken symmetry region with short range spiral order characterized by an Ising-like nematic order parameter that compares qualitatively well with classical Monte Carlo results. At intermediate temperatures the phase diagram shows regions with collinear short range orders: for J3/J1 < 1 Néel (π,π) correlations and for J3/J1 > 1 a novel phase consisting of four decoupled third neighbour sublattices with Néel (π,π) correlations in each one. We conclude that the effect of quantum and thermal fluctuations is to favour collinear correlations even in the strongly frustrated regime.